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techvivek07 · 21 days

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Rare Toons India Anime

In the vast and vibrant world of anime, there exists a realm of rare gems that often go unnoticed by mainstream audiences. Among these hidden treasures lies the domain of Rare Toons India Anime, a unique and captivating niche within the anime community. With its distinctive offerings and diverse array of content, Rare Toons India Anime has garnered a dedicated following of enthusiasts who seek out its distinctive charm and allure.

Rare Toons India Anime, often abbreviated as RTI Anime, is a subset of the broader anime genre that encompasses lesser-known titles, often originating from India or other countries with burgeoning animation industries. These anime series and films possess a distinct flair and cultural resonance that sets them apart from their more widely recognized counterparts. Despite their relative obscurity on the global stage, Rare Toons India Anime has cultivated a devoted fanbase drawn to its unconventional storytelling, vibrant characters, and rich cultural tapestry.

One of the defining features of Rare Toons India Anime is its eclectic mix of genres and themes, ranging from fantasy and adventure to comedy and slice-of-life. Each series or film offers a unique narrative experience, providing viewers with a refreshing departure from the familiar tropes and conventions of mainstream anime. Whether delving into mythological epics, exploring futuristic dystopias, or celebrating the intricacies of everyday life, Rare Toons India Anime offers something for every taste and preference.

One of the hallmarks of Rare Toons India Anime is its emphasis on storytelling that reflects the cultural heritage and traditions of India. Many series draw inspiration from Indian mythology, folklore, and history, weaving these elements into narratives that resonate with audiences both within and beyond the country's borders. Through vibrant animation, memorable characters, and compelling narratives, Rare Toons India Anime serves as a celebration of India's rich cultural tapestry, offering viewers a glimpse into its diverse and enchanting world.

Despite its niche appeal, Rare Toons India Anime has garnered recognition for its creativity, innovation, and artistic merit. While mainstream anime often dominates the spotlight, these lesser-known titles have earned acclaim for their bold experimentation, unique visual styles, and thought-provoking themes. From groundbreaking animation techniques to daring narrative choices, Rare Toons India Anime pushes the boundaries of what anime can achieve, captivating audiences with its imaginative storytelling and artistic prowess.

One of the key factors driving the popularity of Rare Toons India Anime is the passion and dedication of its creators and fans. In an industry dominated by large studios and established franchises, these independent animators and enthusiasts work tirelessly to bring their visions to life, often facing numerous challenges along the way. Yet, their unwavering commitment to their craft shines through in every frame, imbuing Rare Toons India Anime with a sense of authenticity and sincerity that resonates with audiences worldwide.

The rise of digital platforms and online communities has further amplified the visibility and impact of Rare Toons India Anime, allowing fans to connect, share, and celebrate their favorite series and films with like-minded individuals across the globe. Through fan forums, social media groups, and dedicated websites, enthusiasts come together to discuss their favorite shows, discover new titles, and support the artists and creators behind them. This sense of community fosters a vibrant and inclusive environment where fans can express their passion for Rare Toons India Anime freely.

As the popularity of Rare Toons India Anime continues to grow, so too does the recognition of its cultural significance and artistic merit. While these titles may remain relatively obscure compared to their mainstream counterparts, their impact on the anime industry and the global cultural landscape should not be underestimated. Through their creativity, innovation, and dedication, Rare Toons India Anime creators and fans alike are reshaping the anime landscape, bringing new perspectives and voices to the forefront of the medium.

In conclusion, Rare Toons India Anime represents a captivating and enriching facet of the anime genre, offering viewers a diverse array of stories, themes, and artistic styles to explore. From its roots in Indian culture and mythology to its bold experimentation and innovative storytelling, Rare Toons India Anime continues to captivate audiences with its distinctive charm and allure. As awareness and appreciation for these lesser-known titles continue to grow, so too does the recognition of their cultural significance and artistic merit within the broader anime community.

#blog #technology #google #app

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jvnla · 4 months

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Leading cookbook agency The Ekus Group joins the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, operating as a boutique culinary division.

Joining Partners, Jennifer Weltz, Alice Tasman, Ariana Philips, Agent, Alicia Brooks, and Junior Agent, Cole Hildebrand, Sally Ekus will spearhead cookbook and lifestyle titles as Senior Literary Agent, assisted by Literary Associate Ty Billman.

The January 2024 merger signifies JVNLA’s passionate commitment to cultivating the careers of writers across a diverse range of experiences and categories. The Ekus Group, established in April 1982 by Lisa Ekus, and now owned by Sally Ekus, has been the leading agency for cookbook authors, chefs, and culinary talent for more than four decades. In 2000, the business evolved from the first and only specialized culinary book PR firm in the country, to an exclusively culinary focused full-service agency. Their premier offerings include a nationally recognized media training program, talent agency, literary agency, and consulting services. Twenty years later, with Sally Ekus at the helm, The Ekus Group represents award-winning, best-selling, and emerging voices across all corners of the culinary bookshelf and has closed hundreds of deals with all major publishers and independent houses.

“I have long admired The Ekus Group’s expertise in cookbook representation and Sally’s passion for untold culinary stories,” says Jennifer Weltz, President of JVNLA. “Welcoming Sally to our agency means JVNLA is at the forefront of one of the fastest growing niches in publishing, food and lifestyle, an area we are excited to expand.”

The relationship between The Ekus Group and JVNLA dates back to the origin of both trailblazing agencies. Founder Lisa Ekus’ first job in publishing was with the visionary Jean Naggar who established her eponymous literary agency in 1978. Jean’s unwavering commitment and dedication to her authors' careers and the tenacity to fight for their success on all fronts possible, set the stage and foundation for Lisa to start her own business just four years later.

“In many ways, this agency alignment is like coming home,” says Sally Ekus, reflecting on the foundational parallels between the two second generation, women-owned agencies, “which for someone who has worked in a family business for 15 years is saying a lot.”

Sally brings with her the entire Ekus Group backlist, further strengthening the opportunities for The Ekus Group’s legacy authors, as well as opening her list to new clients across non-fiction. Sally will also continue offering consulting services, author trainings, and educational industry programs such as her How to Write a Cookbook course.

This joint endeavor underscores the unwavering commitment JVNLA and The Ekus Group have for their clients, and their clients’ career goals, and will specifically expand both agencies’ portfolios.

To learn more about The Ekus Group visit www.EkusGroup.com and to learn more about JVNLA visit www.JVNLA.com.

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summeroffice · 6 months

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youtube

Interview with Michael Nacke

17:12 You speak a lot about Russian propaganda, absolutely fair. But Russian propaganda is effective if and only when it rests on some kind of emotional or some other ground. And you touched on the topic of negotiations.

We see that this is not just a construct of Russian propaganda of official representatives at this stage of war. This is also a message from the Western media. Which means that the West is somehow discussing with Ukraine the supposed possibility of peaceful negotiations, and even NBC is saying how they are going to force Ukraine to do this.

We also see, I don't know if this can be called a political program, but at least a statement from Oleksiy Arestovych, once your colleague and comrade, who is now quite active, I would say, oppositional to the Ukrainian authorities' niche and in fact also actively talks about negotiations and their necessity.

That is, some kind of discussion and emotional base on which the Russian propaganda then rests, it exists. How wide is this base in your opinion? Where does it come from and how will it develop in the future from the point of view of whether it can spread wider and further demoralise a certain amount of Ukrainian society and the military?

Three components I would highlight. First, of course it will be expanding for some time because we are, I repeat once again, at the peak depressive stage of the war as such. And certainly, some alternative solutions are being sought here which in fact are not such. Why? Because I repeat once again, Russia is not interested in actual negotiations, Russia is interested in fixing the status quo that exists today.

And this is essentially prolongation of the war but in other forms in a protracted format. And of course, against this background such trends will certainly continue, publications will appear, they will refer to anonymous sources and so on and so forth. Again, we need to be calm about this, give a rational explanation of the impossibility of this, well, that is, going on air again and commenting on this.

The second component, I would still recommend paying much less attention to the statements of people like Arestovych, they do not influence the processes that are taking place in Ukraine, they do not determine the method and direction of decision-making and they are not popular in Ukrainian society, both as people and as speakers and accordingly, people who could today reflect some part of the mood in Ukraine.

19:36 Look, at least Oleksiy was popular for some time.

He was [he continues to speak, and smiles].

What happened in your opinion? What is this transformation? How do you explain it?

Uhm, no realisation of personal ambitions. Well, that is, they have not been realised to the extent that-- This is, by the way, one of the key problems of the political process if already, in general, to speak more broadly and, let's say, to systematise, the key problem of the internal political process in Ukraine.

There always has been the attempt of people to realise their ambitions, which are not properly formalised and not properly, or rather, do not correspond to the idea that is objective within Ukraine. Well, that is, roughly speaking, narcissism too often brings people under such an absolutely incredible speed of transformation of the position of worldview ideas and so on.

20:25 Well, politicians and public figures without narcissism, it is difficult to meet. This is a fairly common combination.

I agree, I agree. But there is a small caveat. We are now in a state of war and here we need to be very careful to some fundamental worldview things that relate to Ukraine and Russia and how you interpret them. This is not a question of realising or not realising your ambitions, this is a question of understanding exactly what your country is experiencing or what it is not experiencing. Unfortunately, sometimes people behind these ambitions lose a sense of conformity to time and place where they are located.

Again, within the democratic processes, any person has the right to their positions. I can't prohibit anyone from doing anything. Simply from the point of view of influencing the events that take place in Ukraine, Mr Arestovych of course does not have this, as it seems to him, well, or seems to someone, so I would pay less attention to this.

38:08 In principle, I have the opportunity, to put it mildly, to communicate daily with both the president and Mr Zaluzhnyi [he smiles], and to be honest, I feel somehow awkward all the time to explain the common truths [that there is no conflict between them] [he smiles even more broadly].

39:30 Look, our [he means at our place] communication at the level of the president, the commander-in-chief, goes on daily. There are military offices, headquarters, supply selectors, additional events relating to those, for example, any aspects of mobilisation, and again, supplies, and the type of war and correction of strategy, and so on, at this level, they have an ideal relationship.

That is, there is no excessive bureaucracy, there is no need to coordinate anything through some assistants, the president is maximally loyal to the possibility of direct communication at the level of commander-in-chief, supreme commander-in-chief, and accordingly, they perceive with irony when people say that they are not talking there somewhere [he smiles; it's lovely to see him so happy], or so on and so forth.

I see all this directly and honestly speaking, I calm everyone down all the time, well, even inside us, I say, calmly, let them talk, and we continue our work from the point of view, again, of correcting certain plans.

#mykhailo podolyak #michael nacke #interview #Youtube

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cerastes · 3 years

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Why do you think Doctor is popular amongst AK fans, Drimo? Is it solely because of the typical insert self thing all gacha protags have in common, or is it Being Into War Crimes and Silly Shit? Or a mix of both?

A number of factors, in my opinion.

Arknights is more of a niche game in terms of appeal and presentation when compared (and contrasted) with the rest of the market, and indeed, while it doesn't have the sales of products with potent, established IPs behind them (IE: Fate) or products that have a more mainstream appeal to them (IE: Genshin), it still does pretty well in terms of revenue because it has leaned into its niche and has succeeded in it.

You could consider Doctor a reflection of that design philosophy and output: A good deal of mobile games sort of force the angle of "you are a young person, not an adult yet" to the main character. Or it goes completely unaddressed and people just fill in the blanks however they see fit. With Doctor, the possibility of not being an adult is, well, astronomically low, but never outright impossible. This is not done by assigning an age or age range to the character per se, but rather, because of how the world treats them, and here is where I think Doctor, as a character meant to be our point of view into the world of Arknights, succeeds and ends up more interesting than practically everyone else: Doctor is part of the world's mystique, not a mere visitor to it.

Doctor is not a rando that got pulled into something bigger than them and now has to scramble and make allies to deal with it. Even from second one, when one might get that impression, it's immediately established that Doctor had their hands in the pie since a long time ago, these people aren't just getting to know you now, you are surrounded by a mix of characters that know you closely and others than have heard the stories. Amiya and Ace have already gone through thick and thin with you, Dobermann has only heard you're this absolute monster of a tactician, Scout knows you so well that he can lament what has become of you. Your character, Doctor, is not a visitor, a foreigner, they are, from second one, DEEPLY involved in the overarching story, with ties to several characters from the get go. The way the player is eased into the world from such a character is amnesia, which organically allows you to "relearn" the world, your duties, and what's going on.

The war crimes and silly bits, as you put it, are a big fruit born from the fertile soil detailed above, but it's not the war crimes and silly bits in a vacuum that make Doc universally popular, but rather, the way they are treated as building blocks of an ultimately more important facet of the story: Doctor is in fact part of the world, and not a mere visitor experiencing the world, and they have the characterization, loose as it may be in some regards (the silly bits and the bits open to interpretation) and rigid as it may be in others (the war crimes, the ties to Amiya, Kal'tsit, Flamebringer, W, and other veteran RI personnel, and other such bits that are NOT fully open to interpretation). Few things about Doc are set in stone in a way that you can't do whatever you want with them as a self-insert, while at the same time, there are some things that are inexorably tied to Doctor's role as a character, which are not merely informed, but rather, are built upon and developed constantly, intrinsically and extrinsically. That last bit there might have been confusing, so let me posit an example: If they were merely informed, we'd be told Doctor did some very very bad things in the past, but that's ok! You can be better now! It's the future that matters, we'll change from here on! But it is not merely informed, it is built upon and developed, we're told Doctor did some very bad things, but not to the character directly at first, rather, we hear discussion about Doctor's past, then it's ambiguously suggested to the character proper (usually, it's Kal'tsit that does this) that they were godawful in the past, and no one in earshot really denies it, but they weren't just godawful, they also had some very personable aspects to themselves, such as Scout saying that even after they'd become a beast of logic and warfare that treats the loss of life like a game of chess, Doctor still took time to have a drink with the likes of Scout and Ace, talk with them, hang out, to be supportive to Amiya beyond just the role of a combat commander, and other such things. The war crimes, thus, are not there to just say "Doc was Bad And Cool", it's treated in a tragic, solemn manner that has characters still try to find the good in them, and the effects of which still affect the characters to this day.

Doctor feels much more like a character than the usual self insert without really stripping away the freedom that comes with having a self insert.

To make a comparison, Mr. Sawyer, creator of Fallout: New Vegas, addressed a more self-contained but similar example in a bit of introspection regarding the game, particularly about how people liked Courier Six more in the DLCs rather than the base game. He rationalized that it is because Courier Six in the DLCs has a lot more humanized dialogue that allowed certain things to be set in canon, so long as you said them, about their backstory. Little things, peppered throughout the DLCs, such as having kids or having been to a certain state before coming to the Mojave, as well as far less generic dialogue, such as colorful insults and other such more personable lines of dialogue or expressions of surprise compared to the very bland and direct Courier Six of the main game, whose dialogue they made with the intent of being a blank slate and thus had to be as uncharacterized as possible so people would fill their own blanks. In relation to what we were discussing about Doctor, you could say that Courier Six in the base game feels more like a visitor to the world, while Courier Six in the DLCs feels like they are part of the game mystique and the game world's, like another character in the narrative over whom you have control more than a complete blank slate over which to project into.

The market trend always favors self-inserts, it always has and this likely will never change, especially in anime style games, given the very self-referential nature of media from Japan and its influence in its neighboring countries (such as Arknights in this case, being a game made by a Chinese developer), but one cannot deny the impact and resulting popularity from self-insert characters that are still a part of the world's mystique rather than being mere visitors to it, as this has an audience as well, a specific subset of the self-insert, if you will. I think Doctor belongs in this category, and enjoys the benefits that come with it, thanks to being well written.

#paragon arthur #long post #ended up a bit longer than I wanted but hey #arknights #doctor

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secretgamergirl · 3 years

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A Little Horrifying Primer on Transphobes

Some time ago, I put together a Little Fact Checking Primer on Trans People, as a basic resource for disabusing people of some of the many completely ridiculous yet absurdly widespread beliefs about trans people that simply have no basis whatsoever in reality. And wouldn’t you know it, every single lie exposed in that primer is not only still widely believed, but is presently being used as a basis to sign some absolutely horrific human rights abuses into law. So it’s high time I follow that up, in this case focused more on who keeps actively spreading these lies and why. I’m going to try and keep things as light as I can here, but we’re going to be looking at the most monstrous side of human nature, so apologies in advance if this is a dark read.

First, let me just note that there are two things I don’t plan to do in this piece. I’m not going to waste time debunking the arguments of the people I’m highlighting (much of this is already covered in my earlier primer, others have done the work in cases where I haven’t, and frankly these people’s claims should be self-evidently utter nonsense to begin with). I am also going to be very selective in what I link to, or even share related images of, as I would frankly not like to fill a post on a blog I generally try to keep safe for all audiences with media directly dealing with, for instance, child sexual assault, and much of the relevant information also involves stochastic terrorism against innocent people, and I would prefer not to throw more fuel onto such fires.

Transphobes lie constantly, about everything.

To some degree this is obvious. We’re talking about people who scaremonger about the possibilities of trans women dominating competitive sports and assaulting people in restrooms, despite the status quo already reflecting the conditions they insist would make these inevitibilities for decades and centuries respectively, and their grim visions never once having come to pass, and also constantly insisting that the woman in the photo below is actually a man, going further to say this is evident to anyone giving her the merest glance.

It goes beyond that though. There’s at least a little plausible deniablity in claims like this, or that “science is on their side” if they were simply uninformed about the world they live in, never actually looking into what laws exist, what science actually says, and never actually meeting a trans person or even seeing a picture of one of us. I’m talking really bold lies here. Like wholecloth fabricating a story that a convicted murder was trans, including anecdotes about wigs dresses and a planned name change, in a major newspaper. Or to cite an old favorite of mine, the time a pack of bigots walked up to a crowd of people peacefully picketing a transphobic legal proposal, started roughing them up and taking closeup photos of members of the crowd to stalk online when they got home, got sufficiently riled up for one to straight up assault an innocent person half her size, filmed the whole thing, uploaded it to youtube, and used stills of that assault as acomanying photos when they went home to write articles about the assailant being a “grandmother” attacked by rowdy trans women. And yes, they did monkey’s paw my wish to see that specific image on newspapers. Interesting side note, when it came to real public light that J.K. Rowling endorsed this sort of hatred, it was because she accidentally pasted some profanity laden rambling about how the imagined moral character of the other party in that incident, years after the fact, into a post praising a child’s fan art of her work.

To be a little less niche, transphobes can’t get enough of spreading the lie that the young fellow in this photo is a girl. Specifically a trans girl, providing proof that all their scaremongering about the dastardly threat of trans girls in competitive sports has finally come to pass.

To be fully clear, that’s a man (or a boy if you want to split hairs about him being 17 in that photo). Mack Beggs. A rather insidious choice for this sort of story, considering the actual context for that photo. See, Beggs attended high school in Texas, during a (still ongoing as I write this) period wherein that particular state had caved to this exact sort of propaganda, and in order to head off a wholly imagined wave of trans girls competing on girls’ sports teams, and enacted a law mandating that in all such competitions must compete under whatever gender is stated on their birth certificates. And as it happens, the first, and to my knowledge ONLY time this has come up was with Beggs here, who again, is a man, as no one with a grip on reality could argue against, has “female” on his birth certificate. Which is another way of saying he is a trans man. The guys in the same boat as trans women who we talk about a whole hell of a lot less because their existence is extremely inconvenient to the majority of transphobic propaganda. Case in point. And this is all information it is really impossible to come across if you’re coming across this photo in any sort of respectable source. Take this story, which is as unambiguous about this as you can get. And yet, in the very comments section of that story, there they are. Carrying on like this story about a trans guy, forced by a transphobic law to compete as a girl, which he absolutely did not want, and received horrific threats over, using phrases like “female to male” and bringing up that he was assigned female at birth and is on testosterone-based HRT, is about a trans woman cheating the system. Or to quote word for word, “Now also transgender female want to be male also compete in female sport. biological born“ That’s not “being confused,” that’s standing next to you in a white desert and complaining about being adrift in a black ocean, bald-faced, not even trying to be convincing just make a power play, lying through one’s teeth.

I could spend this whole article on just this point. Lying about who they are, various people’s falsified credentials, whole websites full of “anonymous parents of children who think they’re trans” turning out to be one single woman documenting the abuse of her very much trans son, or of course the people behind the whole “bathroom bill” panic candidly admitting it was all based on utter fiction. I do have other points to cover though.

Transphobes are firmly entrenched in the media.

It is extremely difficult to find oneself in a position of having to explain to people that a particular group of people is effectively in control of press outlets, as that is rather classically a claim conspiracy theorists absolutely love to toss around at various marginalized groups (including trans people hilariously enough, but of course the most common and lingering version of this is the antisemitic variant). I really can’t get around it here though. Specifically in the U.K., you honestly can say that transphobes control the media. I already touched on this with the assault case I mentioned above and the fabricated story about the murderer, but this is a pretty well-documented situation. I mean, even The Guardian calls out The Guardian on this, and that’s the outlet that gets the most attention because it’s the one with the most otherwise respected name, but every paper in the country has been running transphobic propaganda pieces on a weekly if not daily basis for years now, and while they do get reprimanded by watchdog groups and have mass walk-outs over the worst of it, it’s not like there’s some governing body with the authority to step in about it. Meanwhile the BBC is constantly inviting diehard zealots like Graham Linehan to news programs where he compares being trans to being a nazi, and hosting debates where someone just sits down and repeatedly chants the word “penis” at a trans woman.

Things are better in the rest of the world, but we still have right-wing creeps like Jesse Singal both writing horrific propaganda pieces (we’ll get back to that one) and blackballing trans writers out of covering trans issues ourselves (and personally stalking the hell out of those of us who try). We’ve got our Joe Rogans and Tucker Carlsons out there (no way in hell I’m linking videos here, have a real information link and a still).

The line between diehard transphobes and straight-up nazis basically does not exist.

What even is there to say here? You can easily poke around havens for nazi activity for yourself and compare the particular unique vocabulary used there to the primary bastion of anti-trans hate speech on the internet (the “feminism” section of what was originally a site for parenting tips before violent fascists took the forums over) or just peruse the follows of the thousands of people I’ve blocked on social media and see if you can sort out a clear division in the networks of channers with frog avatars and the accounts with names like GoodieXXrealwoman, or you can read up on Gab and Spinster, the two twitter alternatives that are just different portals to the same server, set up by the same guy. Maybe do some research into “the LGB Alliance,” or WoLF but any way you slice it the only real difference to be found is the general purpose nazis take a little time off now and then to watch borderline pedophilic anime and the really dedicated transphobes think to use language that sounds vaguely well-educated and left-leaning. I mean, this came from the “feminist” side of the fence:

And not to belabor the point here, but the ones claiming to be a bunch of “feminist mums” sure do let the mask slip any time they’re confronted with the fact that “women” includes black women, and oh just have a whole thread about all the weird conspiratory theories these people have about how trans people’s whole existence is some sort of Jewish plot for world domination. I swear a few months ago they were all passing around a story about some bank having an above average number of trans employees and they were all just “and we all know who controls the banks, right?” about it.

Transphobes endorse an awful lot of people who are openly pro-pedophila.

This is the part where I am really loath to link the many many specific examples I have on hand. Or to talk about this at all for reasons of good taste. Or, for that matter, to talk about this in a tumblr post when there’s an ongoing problem of people with backgrounds strongly tied to this site making baseless accusations of pedophilia against every queer person they can find, so let me be very clear just what I’m talking about while avoiding anything too graphic.

That’s James Cantor. Transphobes love him for being one of the closest things they have to a scientist on their side. And I am featuring him in a screenshot here showing that he is followed by current queen of the transphobes J.K. Rowling, while speaking to both another big name in transphobic circles, Debra Soh, and based on their names, what I’m guessing is at least one straight-up nazi. And in case you think “the P” he’s talking about adding to LGBT (or “GLBT” as weird anti-queer bigots who also have issues with women often write it) might stand for “poly” or “pan” he’s all too happy to clarify that.

This is the entire thrust of Cantor’s work and life. He is the world’s biggest pedophile rights advocate. He wants it declassified as a mental disorder, all stigma on it removed, and tirelessly pushes forward the idea that the majority of.. people who feel compelled to sexually assault children are good people who present no potential harm to anyone and should in fact be lauded.

I am not generally one to claim that someone with a PhD is spewing out questionable garbage with regard to their field, but the reason I am aware of Cantor at all is that other transphobes keep trying to hold up a particular post on his blog as "a study” (which it is not) that offers “proof” (in the form of a blurry jpeg of basically some random numbers) of some ridiculous quackery about how trans kids will “grow out of it” if exposed to conversion therapy (another way of saying torture), which Cantor himself seems to be pushing, so I am somewhat skeptical of his academic chops. And I am, of course, REALLY suspicious that all these other bigots gravitate to him purely because they’re that desperate to find anyone with a PhD in anything that backs them up against literally every scientist in a relative field, to the point that they merely forgive his particular advocacy they are plainly all aware of, particularly when such a common fig leaf used by transphobes is “keeping children safe from sexual deviants.”

And of course, Cantor is most often invoked when coming to the defense of Kenneth Zucker. This Kenneth Zucker.

Those are separate papers. Zucker isn’t controversial though for organizing panels to discuss how attractive people agree small children are (at least not exclusively). Mostly, he’s known for running a conversion therapy center which subjected gay and trans children to various sorts of torture in an effort to “fix” them, which at least for those trans "patients” I have spoken with involved a fair amount of having them strip completely naked and talking a lot about their genitals.

Zucker is something of a controversial figure with the transphobic scene, as they are extremely on board with his sexual torture of queer children, but he does actual work (for some value of the term) involving trans people and thus is not able to commit as fully as they would prefer to making life horrible for trans people, due to a professional obligation to acknowledge reality now and then. As an aside, the similarly positioned Ray Blanchard, while not to my knowledge particularly interested in the attractiveness of children, lives in a similar purgatory of trying to reconcile his career, bigotry, and sexual hangups, yielding compromises like this:

Of course, that’s just looking at the straws transphobes grasp at when looking for scientific credibility. Real leaders of the movement include Germaine Greer, author of The Beautiful Boy, which is about what you are afraid it might be, and features a very young child in a cover feature he did not consent to posing for. Or Julie Bindel, who among other things is rather infamous for writing whole articles on subjects like whether a teenage girl she came across maybe has a huge penis you can totally see if you really squint at her skirt. Again, I will not share a link to go along with that one.

Transphobes terrorize and attempt to defund charities and other unambiguously good organizations.

Graham Linehan, previously best known for cowriting some sitcoms and possibly spending a year angling to get into my pants so awkwardly I didn’t pick up on it is now best known for trying to pull the plug on a children’s charity, in a story that somehow also involves Donkey Kong. Well, and the interview about nazis. And possibly the other interview about “defending me from nazis” until it got into his head that I might not be as young and hot as he imagined. Rather not link to a far right extremist youtube channel though.

There’s also a current effort to replace Stonewall (an organization named after the location where a pair of trans women kicked off a riot which is generally agreed to be the start of the LGBT+ rights movement) as the UK’s primary LGBT+ rights organization with the “LGB Alliance.” The hate group mentioned above, with the skull face and the rifle. Closest I can find to an article on that effort on short notice that isn’t propaganda.

Transphobes paper areas in truly disgusting propaganda.

I don’t want to directly link to grown adults skulking around children’s playgrounds and bathrooms plastering surfaces with mass printed stickers of crudely drawn penises, but would encourage you to read this very long post, being sure to load all the images, to really understand how deeply strange this behavior gets.

Finally, I cannot stress this enough, this really extreme behavior I’m citing, and the specific people involved in the examples I’m giving, these aren’t random cranks on the fringe of things. The people going on televised panel discussions, writing up news stories, and testifying before lawmakers in efforts to pass horrifically discriminatory if not literally life-endangering laws (there is a major ongoing effort to legally end all medical care for trans people, and I don’t just mean care directly relating to being trans) are literally the same people involved in the sexualization of children, nazi collaborations, and roving gangs assaulting people in the street. At a bare minimum I urge people, when booking guests and handing out writing contracts, to do background checks and see if they’re platforming actual terrorists. If we could actually bring legal consequences to bear against the worst of this, that would be great too. As things stand though, the whole world is just consistently citing a bunch of racist, woman-hating, serial liars with no real credentials, and questionable attitudes towards the sexual abuse of children, as “trusted experts” and refusing to seat actual trans people or people who have legitimately committed lifetimes to academic and practical work with trans people any seats at the table.

#trans #transphobia #educational resources

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jostenneil · 3 years

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Do you have any recommendations for small town romance books? Or found family books? Thank you!

YES. do i ever omg. a good chunk of these will be children's books if that is alright bc that's where my love for this mode of storytelling really birthed itself. well, that and the arthur tv show bc childhood me was positively enthralled by the idea of a group of friends all living within relative walking distance of each other and being able to eat ice cream at the same shop every afternoon. there was an intimacy to it that fascinated me, as silly as it sounds

the penderwicks by jeanne birdsall - this series is a loose, modern retelling of little women that mires itself in the atmosphere of comforting, lively niches and the mountainous landscapes of the american northeast. jeanne birdsall used to do around three to four years of research between writing each book and i think it lent itself so well to what she wrote bc i was pulled effortlessly into the plot each time. the sense of camaraderie between this small collective of people as you follow them across the course of many years is so endearing and it's probably the defining small town book series for me

main street by anne m. martin - most people know anne m. martin bc of the babysitters club. i know her bc of this series! it's about two girls whose parents die in an accident, so they're taken in by their grandmother. she lives in this quiet town where the sense of community is so intimate, esp bc she lives in a row house! there's about eight houses on one street all connected to each other through secret doors in their attics and the neighbors as such are very close. i love the depth of humanity martin develops in the characters, esp bc it really touches upon how each person you know is dealing with their own struggles that you may not be entirely privy to, and then there is a series long plot around the town's history that really helps to illustrate how community prospers and evolves over time

anne of green gables by l. m. montgomery - ok this is a bit of a self evident answer but nonetheless, i feel compelled to include it. this is probably the defining small town story classic, i think? the series builds itself upon anne's imagination and how that not only fleshes out green gables (and her other hometowns) in its simple beauty but also approaches the very real personas of the people she grows up with, as compared to her more romantic and idealized aspirations for herself. it's simultaneously an exploration in romance and realism through the lens of a small but growing community around anne, and montgomery's prose really makes it a magical experience. the romance is also to die for oh my god one of the best slow burns in history, nothing will ever compare to the pure drama that is anne shirley and gilbert blythe's years long love story

beartown by fredrik backman - the tone of this book is pretty drastically different from the other recommendations here but it's nonetheless one i would put forth bc it very closely analyzes the flaws in mindset that can arise from small town living as well. there's a lot of sadness and grief, but it manages to balance this fine line of critiquing narrow mindsets and resistance to change while believing in the ability of a community to come together and mature. it's just. . . very real, and i stayed up listening to it until 4am one night and couldn't stop crying bc the raw emotion of it all really touched me. the random closeness between certain members of the town really got to me, esp in the sequel novel, us against you. just be sure to check out the trigger warnings before reading

aurora county trilogy by deborah wiles - oh my god. ohhhhh my god. you would not believe the memories i have around these books. i remember listening to love, ruby lavender in the car when i was maybe ten or so and positively falling in love with this grieving ten year old girl, and her mom who writes about recipes using zucchini, and her grandmother whom she rescues chickens with. each book in this trilogy centers itself around a child dealing with the death of a loved one, and i think that is a very unique experience to read about, bc children are already dealing with enough at that age. they have to figure out how they're going to fit in, how they're going to navigate the rest of their lives without someone they love so much, and in this small town setting, how to share this grief with a bunch of people they don't want to share that grief with. the books are deeply sad and simply honest, but in a way that's very cathartic to read about at any age

because of winn dixie by kate dicamillo - it's been years and years since i read this book or rewatched the movie but here's another rec that centers itself in a child dealing with grief, albeit not grief over death, but abandonment and isolation. opal's bond with winn-dixie leads her to meet and bond with several people of the new town she moves to with her father, and those building friendships become a way for her to process her grief and move forward from it. i have very vague memories of it now but i remember enjoying how eccentric each of the characters was

beach read by emily henry - this is a much newer rec than everything else on this list but so well deserved! this made me cry my eyes out at 4am it was so crazy. january and gus are two people who knew each other in college and coincidentally meet again as neighbors in a small town, where both have travelled to try to beat their writing slumps and chug out a new book. as a way to challenge themselves, they decide to write a book within the genre that the other person excels at, and doing research along that vein allows them to learn a lot more about each other than they initially thought they did. there's a lot of grief underpinning the story, and the people in the town aren't necessarily a huge focus, but i think the quiet of the setting really allows the emotion to permeate the whole thing and drawn you in, bc sometimes you just have more room to think and dwell and reflect when you're in a quiet corner of the country

i hope these are sufficient for now, but lmk if you'd like recs within other media too! i feel like i have a good chunk of dramas and tv shows that speak to this narrative setting

#asks #mine:recs

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timac-extraversal · 4 years

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Tensions in Media Representation

(~1,100 words, 4m)

Summary: How representative or diverse media is depends a lot on which and how many categories we use to define what it is representative of. Since almost no media can be perfectly representative, we should quantify the psychological effects of representation to determine what tradeoffs we should be willing to make.

I see I've picked up some new blog followers from the recent post. Let's do a 101.

Diversity & Categories

The nature of diversity is that it is almost limitless. Out in the world there are over seven billion unique human beings, but that means that there are far more than seven billion ways to categorize them.

We can start with a binary - split the population into everyone over 5'10" and everyone under that height. Then we can make our categories more specific, or 'granular'. Perhaps we could break everyone on Earth into 84 categories, one for each inch. Or we could use maybe 280 centimeters, or even 2,800 milimeters, if that isn't specific enough.

Unless a representative body or artistic work contains all approximately 7.5 billion human beings on Earth in equal measure, we can always call for it to be made more diverse by increasing our number of categories for people - or less diverse by reducing our number of categories. This reflects a natural tension in the concept of representation.

Hollywood

Consider a movie. A major purpose given for representation is a sense of inclusion, and thus people seem to focus on inclusion in large, popular movies, rather than niche movies that cater to specific demographics. (Another reason given is not just to feel inclusion, but to promote it.)

Each character needs to spend time on screen to act, recite dialogue, and so on. Every time we add a new major character, we have to either reduce the screen time for the other characters or else make the movie itself longer. Obviously, there's a limit to how long people will be willing to watch a movie. The upper limit would be a hypothetical 3-hour Twitter movie in which every thirty seconds a new character reads a tweet, for a cast of 360.

I think we can all agree that "360 Tweets" would be terrible movie. In practical terms, we'd usually prefer a main cast of somewhere between 5-12 characters, and the latter might be stretching it if we aren't making a heist movie.

Category Aggregation

China, Korea, and Japan are entire countries with unique cultures, languages, histories, and internal ethnic groups. Political animosity in the region lingers to this day, in part stoked by the government of China. In the American racial system, however, there is only one broad category for all of East Asia ("asian," which also includes people from countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam or the Philippines), so that someone whose ancestors are from China might protest an exhibit where white Americans can try on Japanese kimono, as "cultural appropriation," while native Japanese visitors look on in surprise. (It seems the traditional kimono industry itself might be in financial trouble, but if they are looking for relief overseas in the English-speaking world, they may not find it.)

There are, of course, reasons for this. For instance, many Americans would be unable to tell Han Chinese from Yamato Japanese by sight or by language, and there are Americans of mixed asian ancestry or of asian ancestry who have never so much as visited Japan or China. To the degree that race is a social phenomenon that's enforced on us from the outside, it might make sense to view "asian American" as a "race."

This works out well for our Hollywood movie. By compressing all of Asia into "asian," all of Africa into "black," and much of South and Central America into "hispanic," "indigenous," or "white," we can get an actor from each major group well within the cast size for our heist movie. In fact, it helps us with casting in other ways - a Korean woman might play a Japanese character without Americans noticing, much as we might have a Swede play a Dane.

Intersectional Overloading

Suppose it isn't just race. There's more to representation (and lived experience) than skintone - which means we have more ground to cover. How do we fit it all the necessary representation into just 12 characters? Simple - we aim for each character to count as multiple categories of representation: black and trans, gay and hispanic, disabled and immigrant, religious minority and mentally ill, etc.

However, the more overloaded with specific category memberships, the more improbable a character becomes. This may lead to the characters becoming less representative. While I can promise you that someone who is both trans and hispanic must exist somewhere in America, the typical experience of "being hispanic" is not "being trans and hispanic."

Category Separation

It's often implied that lack of representation is psychologically hazardous, but just how dangerous is it? If representation must be both highly detailed and highly present in order for people to thrive, it might be necessary to abolish the blockbuster movie and divide up the major media market into a number of smaller niche markets, then prevent anyone from buying media that is insufficiently representative of themselves.

Large firms such as Disney could use motion capture technology and CGI to quickly adapt to each cultural context from a 'core' film, changing the architecture, props, and certain characteristics of the characters. They would also need to do more research into cultural communities. In practice this would mean more expense (due to more work to create the additional assets) while the size of the total audience (and the money they pay) remains the same. Plots would become more abstract or simplified as details need to be changed for each market. Fewer movies would be profitable, and therefore fewer movies would be made. (After all, if a firm continuously makes unprofitable movies, it will eventually go out of business and stop making movies altogether.)

Subjects for Research

Fortunately, the effects of lack of media representation are probably not serious enough for anything nearly so dramatic as that. But if media representation actually is psychologically necessary, then the questions of just how much and what kind of diversity are needed are not just questions for activists and philosophers.

The more diversity and representation are required, the higher the costs (fewer media, smaller audiences, more work in production required, overhead from institutional intervention, etc). There are trade-offs, and discovering just what those trade-offs are - just how much effect detail in diversity representation has, the effect on price (and thus availability) of media, whether increasing shared experiences can increase perceived representation, and how much psychological impact media representation has in general (especially as compared to other interventions) - could prove a fruitful area for research.

If the purpose of diversity and representation in media is psychological health, then we also owe it to our communities to test what kinds of representation are actually effective at achieving this - even if the search makes us uncomfortable.

#social justice #1k words

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tominostuff · 4 years

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Tomino x Hosoda on Wolf Children

Source - https://char-blog.hatenadiary.org/entry/20140720/1405889329

Date: April 2013

--What was the reason behind Mr. Tomino giving this movie such high praise when it was released?

Tomino: Anyone who has experienced child-raising understands that children are an uncontrollable “wolf-like” existence to parents. I saw some opinions that marrying a “wolf” is disgusting but there are times when a boyfriend/girlfriend who seemed beautiful during the romantic stage suddenly changes into an existence even harder to understand than a wolf. In this way, [Hosoda] took a very normal story that everyone experiences and skillfully used an animation metaphor to keep the film within a very easy to watch time frame. It's frustrating to admit but Director Hosoda has become very capable.

Hosoda: I was very encouraged by your earlier comments so I’m sincerely grateful to you.

Tomino: In preparation for this interview, I read many reviews of the film and was reassured by what I saw. Mothers who are currently raising children would write, “this film is a very accurate portrayal of a mother.” I thought, finally animation has produced a “film” that could appeal to a wide audience. There’s something revolutionary in a different way from Miyazaki films. For example, among the reviews, there were some wondering whether the director was conscious of Waldorf Education while making the film.

Hosoda: To get straight to the point, no, I was not aware. The main mother character, being placed in the special situation where she could not rely on general medical institutions to raise “the wolf children”, had no choice but to prepare for children's illness with books, ranging from the classics like "Childcare Code", "Encyclopedia of Childcare" and "Pediatric Medicine", to books on natural remedies. It was simply a matter of Waldorf Education being among those books but what’s interesting is the audience noticing this book cover in the corner of the screen and debating the theories written in those books on their blogs. I think it represents how urgent of an issue child-rearing is for parents.

Tomino: I will not affirm or deny that particular theory of education, but I was surprised that mothers, who have a deep knowledge of children's literature and education, made statements that captured the work to this pedigree. As I thought, this work is seen by a fairly wide range of people. However, when I heard the opinions of the anime industry, I got the sense that they were discussing within the narrow confines of genres. In the first place, I don't really understand the tendency to organize media by identifying people into markets or generations and I think this tendency is making recent works lacking.

Hosoda: I too, think that this newest work has come to a place outside of the usual anime context. Up until Summer Wars I wanted to find out how far I could take world building and see what’s beyond that, while staying within the genre film. On the other hand, there are "movie fans" who have a wide field of view and on the other, there are also many people who like genres films like action, horror, romance, etc. From those people I received criticism which prioritized the laws of genre films, for example, "If you write a werewolf character, that character has to be persecuted and shot by the police and die.”

Tomino: That’s exactly what someone caught up in genres would say. Anime has a narratology centered around action, but I felt Wolf Children went outside of that. The very fact that unfamiliar terms such as “Waldorf Education” came up is proof that there are people who believe this movie goes beyond the confines of anime. In other words, it was conveyed that Hana, the mother character, is not as anime-like and pretty/delicate as the picture, but a woman who carried out strong child-rearing with considerable knowledge and insight. When I saw those reviews that touched upon the very core themes of the plot, I thought that anime was finally established as a medium.

Hosoda: Exactly. This time, I was very happy to see women, especially those in the middle of child raising, discuss this film from the viewpoint of a fellow mother. There was sound debate, including criticism. It's proof that the motif of this film is universal. After all, in both movies and anime, world building and expressions have wider potential than genres.

Tomino: That's exactly right. In my case, I’m very greedy, so if I am to express something to the world, I want it to become popular. I'm not interested in producing something that is only accessible to a narrow group of people who like certain genres. If you start making pandering work for niches, you will become a niche yourself and you will set up a flag to be discriminated against and beaten by society. If you are given the opportunity to express yourself in a public place and show your will, it’s better to be liked by everyone. Of course, being accepted is the premise that business is built upon as well. So, people tend to go in the direction of "it is easier to sell if you specialize by genre", but a work created upon that idea will last for at most two to three years. If I am spending a lot of money to make it, I want to do big business, show a concept that will last 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, and make it sell for a long time. There are quite a lot of works that are forgotten after the momentary box office profit. In that sense, Wolf Children definitely showed a new frontier of "things to express to the public" and I believe that the evaluation and recognition in the next 10 or 20 years will be much higher than it is now.

--What kind of expectations does Director Tomino have for Director Hosoda for the future?

Tomino: I don't have any particular expectations, but more what I would like people to pay attention to is the fact that not everything was made by Mr. Hosoda. The existence of scenario writer, Ms. (Satoko) Okudera is huge and it must’ve only been possible because they were in a realistic space where they could observe children. To the point where you might not have been able to make it if the timing was off by about a year or two. This is a realistic work. So while I think, wow you did really well, unfortunately I also think you’ll never have another chance like this. The moment you are told, "that was a hit, let's do it again!", you may fall with a boom so watch out for that. *tl note cough cough* mirai no mirai *cough*

Hosoda: I may have obtained credibility from the box office hit but I believe every movie comes down to the original project proposal. In the future as well, it will depend on the spirit of challenge and fun imbued in each and every proposal. Instead of thinking, “This particular one was a hit so the next one has to go even higher,” I would like to seek a unique enjoyment of movies to share with audiences for each project. So even if I am asked to make another installment of this movie…

Tomino: I mean you can’t, can you?

Hosoda: Yeah, it is a complete work as it is. I will move on to the next new work. At that time, I have to forget all the previous works and start from scratch thinking about what is interesting in this world.

--How do you feel about Mr. Tomino’s previous statement about making work for the public?

Hosoda: In the case of Wolf Children, the starting point of my idea was from a very familiar place. At the time, my wife and I were having a hard time making children. Therefore, the desire to raise a child and become a parent is directly reflected in the movie. At the same time, I thought that the motif of "raising children" is universal not only to us Japanese but to all over the world. Anyone in any country experiences it. Even if you have no children, you experience being raised by your parents. It's a story common to all humankind, so I thought this was a project that had the potential to be viewed by everyone. That's why I said something like the "child-rearing" film genre, but I realized that there is no such movie (laughs). In the first place, it is difficult to film a live-action movie of a situation like "growing up slowly", and I can't find a movie about a child where the parent is the main character. It’s always the conflict filled story of “overcoming parents in order for their children to grow up." I planned it as a "story from an observational perspective" about how parents watch the growth of their children, but I was really in trouble because there was nothing to refer to. Originally, movies originated from counterculture, so I think that is also related.

Tomino: I was surprised to hear that, but it again reaffirmed the superstition that we could express freely, it’s actually not free at all. The fact that Wolf Children is taken for granted even though it’s doing such special things is amazing. Because at the end of the day it's a cliché story, isn't it? But due to the fact that it is universal …….

Hosoda: Yes, it's a very cliche story you can find anywhere.

Tomino: But the moment it was illustrated through animation techniques, it looks revolutionary. This is actually an embarrassing story because something too obvious should not look innovative. It's a tremendous work because even that aspect can be learned from it.

Hosoda: No no, as a creator, I just started from a very straightforward ideal and aspiration, thinking, "I want to do something like this, something like that, when I have a child," in line with the feelings of my wife and I. When I interviewed fathers and mothers who are raising children as references, they talked about hardships like "I can't sleep at night, I'll run out of personal time", but it all sounded enviable to me. “The fact that you are carrying all of that on your back is amazing!” is how I felt.

Tomino: I see....I couldn't have imagined cutting in from that angle. Even though your own children aren’t that old yet, each one of the scenes are neatly arranged by age. While I was watching the film, I couldn’t understand how you could possibly depict the children’s growth so accurately but listening to your story just now, I think I understand half of it. Were you yearning to be a parent to that extent?

Hosoda: Yes, I was aspiring for it. If I didn’t hold ideals toward the idea, I don’t think this movie could’ve been made. If I had actually experienced a sleepless night with a newborn child, I don’t think I would’ve been able to make a film out of it. Because I had a longing for it, that became the power behind the realism. Even though there are some weaknesses to it not being a lived experience, I felt this was the only time I could make this film. Rather than my personal feelings when I first wrote the plot, I am amazed and grateful towards the secretary company and distribution company that took on such a challenging story.

Tomino: It’s exactly as you say. After all, in the anime industry, we, the creators, are contaminated with the preconceived notion of anime. The staff who had the sensitivity to identify such potential in this film only with that title and proposal is certainly amazing.

--Which scene was the most memorable for Director Tomino?

Tomino: It's rare for me, but I smiled at the last cut. Even though it was a cut with a loose composition without any ingenuity, I giggled, mimicking Hana. It’s because I thought, “Parents are just like that, aren’t they.” As the conclusion of a movie, this was really amazing because usually one would want to include something message-like here. If it were me, I’d be too scared to keep her just seated at the table and would make her look towards the mountains and say “Are you doing well?” There aren’t many movies that end so neatly like that. After all, it is a film that raises the story of the movie and the overall representation theory in a fairly dramatic way. However, looking at director Hosoda's career, you've improved your skills for the pursuit of the genre of anime, and you also love anime as an audience member, right? When trying to pursue such a versatile story with a natural theme, Mr. Hosoda's strength of "animation lover" may turn into a weakness and become a double-edged sword.

Hosoda: It's exactly as you pointed out. But I don't think it's possible to stop liking anime anymore.

Tomino: Of course you can't. Therefore, there is no choice but to plan movies in a straightforward, rule abiding way. In my case, I had the same kind of trouble with Gundam, so I know it's harsh. That’s the extent to which Mr. Hosoda hit the nail on the head and got out of the environment where just making work for the sake of doing the job would pass.

Hosoda: However, while there are hundreds of thousands of movies in the history of movies, from many different people from many different cultures, I still think there is something out there that hasn’t been depicted yet. That is my "hope" that I have to keep making for my son who was born.

Tomino: That's the right line of sight. If you have that perspective, I think you can still make many works in the future. Those are probably words that can only be spoken by someone who felt “maybe what I’m creating is not anime?” since The Girl Who Lept Through Time. Because I personally have never come up with the logic that "there may be something that hasn’t become a movie yet."

Hosoda: What? That has to be a lie. Director Tomino was the one to provide that concept. We have been encouraged by that for over 30 years.

Tomino: No, I have the confidence to say that I don't have that kind of creativity or writing abilities.

Hosoda: There’s no way that’s possible. If so, why did we enjoy the thrill of going “I would've never thought up of this!” every time Director Tomino’s new work came out?

Tomino: That's because, in my case, I'm only thinking about the responsibility of "expressing to the public." Regardless of the fact that there were restrictions due to having sponsors involved with big robots, I have come so far only thinking about the narrow exit of, “if other people make it like this, I will do it this way.”

Hosoda: However, as far as I can see, it seems that Mr. Tomino's work pushes itself beyond and is located far above that, while being aware of the public consciousness.

Tomino: Yes, to that, I can be very clear. Because I don't trust the modern public. How can we raise the public to highbrow and make them Newypes? I desire to continue thinking about these feelings towards the future through the theory of communication. Am I overreaching? That's why I'm taught that "a writer must have a perspective like Mr. Hosoda." I couldn't become a fiction writer because I didn't have that sense. Even looking at the relationship between Hana, Yuki and Ame, I realized that "Drama is something that must be assembled like this."

Hosoda: To me this is an unbelievable story. That relationship between Hana, Yuki and Ame could easily be replaced with the path taken by Commander Doba and Haruru and Karara of Space Runaway Ideon. However I couldn’t write the fierce drama of that parent and child as is…

Tomino: If you say Wolf Children feels lacking because it’s simply about child-rearing without the fierce drama, then you are wrong. Things that everyone already knows. Things that everyone actually has hidden deep inside of them, to be able to just say those things straight out and lay it bare in public. Things like the sensual sense of distance in human relationships, you depict so naturally. I personally can't do that, so I forced it through with an easy-to-understand structure and logic. Passionate feelings required for a drama originally requires a sense of distance, and it should be drawn within that. Whether the distance when a hand stretches out and touches another person is true or good, false or true… that sense of distance is a wonderful way to show the goal of the story naturally. Director Hosoda is allowed to have confidence in his ability to direct those kinds of scenes.

Hosoda: I believe that great directing is not in the skills but luck. There was an intangible something that fit the content and tone of the movie. It was good that I was able to stick it out until the moment when I thought "this is good!" for each cut. Those kinds of moments are luck, and the director is the type of person who has to wait for those moments to happen. I think the directors are blessed with their each individual type of luck.

Tomino: I think that as well and also think that, ideally, a play cannot be made unless you are prepared to make it after understanding the whole world.

Hosoda: That being said, while I think the motif I chose this time is good, I also realized that my ability as a director was not caught up with it, but I still had to go through the pain of making it anyway. I don't really understand the whole world, and I don't have enough expressiveness…

Tomino: if that is the case, then I think you’re okay. What’s important is the awareness that “my abilities may not be enough.” There are certain things that can only be built upon that awareness and even if it's making scenes, it’s not something that can be done by one person. Overcoming obstacles with brute force, saying, "There is no choice but to do it like this," sometimes becomes a form of expression that exceeds one’s own ability. The better the movie, the more I think that the camera is set up with the humility that “I can't do it all by myself,” and you can see the power of the group that one doesn’t see in individual work.

Hosoda: For sure, and that’s important in animation as well.

Tomino: Even with desk work like anime, not everything can be controlled by oneself. With such humility in mind, please continue to create soft Hosoda works that everyone can enjoy.

Hosoda: I’m very honored to receive these words. I will continue to use them as encouragement.

#yoshiyuki tomino #mamoru hosoda #wolf children #translations #interview

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dukeofriven · 5 years

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From An Old Internet Veteran: Go, and Sin No More

I wish I could explain to young people how wild the internet was as it went from the ‘weird niche thing for lame nerds’ irrelevancy of the early 90s and the “Boy This World Wide Web Thing Sure Is Nifty”-style painful optimism that describes 97% of Western Culture between 1994 and 2002 to the ‘Mad Max But Statistically Less Australian” culture that was the internet from 2002 to around 2010. I come neither to praise this era of internet nor condemn it. I merely want understanding. I cannot polish a lumpen pile of rape jokes, Chuck Norris glorification, “ironic” racism, and numa numa fat shaming and say that it’s misunderstood comedic genius. Trash is still trash even if it wins a bunch of Emmys. But at the same time I cannot take you with me back to the 90s and get you to feel, on a visceral level, what it was like to live in a place where Bart Simpson was both promoted as a real and present danger to the moral upbringing of the world’s children and was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential icons of the 20th century. And because I cannot do that I cannot get you to understand how freeing it felt to be on the internet in that Mad Max era. Ten years before a yellow boy shouting “Don’t have a cow” while doing a pathetic kick-flip on a chunky skateboard was considered the potential downfall of humanity’s children, but now you could make something so risqué that the old-guard stuffed-shirt in 1994 would have died on the spot, his brain unable to consider anything so outside his moral world view. I cannot easily make you understand a time when nobody just said whatever it was they wanted, not just because they had no platform to do so but because the rigidity of social convention was so strong. Nobody ever had hardcore lesbian sex on Northern Exposure on prime time television. Nobody on the X-Files ever died by having their head smashed in a car door repeatedly like a melon until viscera spilled all over the pavement. You could not have made Game of Thrones or Steven Universe in 1995. Forget the graphics, forget the budget, you simply couldn’t do or say any of that on television for either kids or adults. The Mad Max internet changed that - changed the very firmament of what was acceptable in media for every genre and for every demographic. Is this a good thing? Not particularly. Is this a bad thing? Not particularly. If this sound frustratingly ambivalent that’s because it is: were we to go back and do it all again, knowing all that we know now, would we do it the same way? No. But then, we would not know all that we know now had we not learned it by making the attempt in the first place.

This poor comfort for someone who dives into some 2006 webcomic with a reputation of a Legacy Touchstone and finds it full of ‘jokes’ about their gender, or sexual preference, or the liberal use of the r-slur, or a kind of hyper-suburban comedic racial ignorance. I am not here to argue that that had any value merely because it was transgressive. But the same space that opened-up to let such ugly things out also opened-up places for marginalized groups to made themselves known, groups who never before had such public voices.

Imagine an apocalypse. Imagine society rebuilding in the ashes. Imagine how many false starts and missteps there would be and you begin to understand just a little of what that period was like. It was embarrassing. It was cruel. It was childish and stupid. But in living through it we grew up. Or, at least, those of us capable of growing up grew up, and learned, and learned to be better - learned what better was. And then we built new places where other people could learn too - and spread the gospel of being better. One of the things that always irritates me when it comes to young people talking about the past is the unexamined privilege of knowledge being at your fingertips. It’s more than just everyone carrying a wireless-internet connected computer in their pocket at all times. It’s more than just a Wikipedia with hundreds of millions of articles and a reputation for fact sourcing. It’s more than just a Google that works. If you never experienced it you cannot imagine what using WebCrawler was like in 1995 against Ask Jeeves in 2005 against Google in 2015 - or even Google between 2005 and 2015. Most people don’t go around thinking about SEO and search engine algorithms but maybe we should because anyone who wants to go “this info’s been on the internet since day one so people have no excuse not to know it” disingenuously argues that information search and retrieval has been consistent across the decades. There was a time - not all that long ago - when to look something up on-line involved getting the tacit agreement of everyone in your household to lose the use of the sole telephone for as long as you were web browsing. There was a time - not all that long ago - when ‘looking something up’ was to burden everyone around you with inconveniences, and while you were doing your web searches there was no guarantee what you wanted could be found with the primitive technology of the day. Do you know how much I’ve learned since joining Tumblr in 2011? On a fundamental level, both about myself and the make-up of our species in terms of social conception? I recently went through a bunch of old posts, removing those with broken links and meaningless content, but also shit that just embarrasses me now - mostly opinions from a period where I hadn’t yet had a chance to learn because the spaces in which to learn it did not yet exist. It’s not just things like communities for [demographic X] - it’s things like “communities for [demographic X] with an ability to broadcast their voices and have platforms able to network their ideas and audience halls able to receive them and a search engine to guide people to that community and a basic understanding that the community even exists in the first place.” And this does not even begin to touch on internet access, something that even now is not a universal thing, and for which getting angry about people’s ignorance reflects a bias all its own. I say all this because I think that a core tenant of cringe culture is a myth of universal access to knowledge and universal awareness of one’s own ignorance. I look back on old posts of things I said and I cringe with self-hatred - cringe enough to rip them down and stuff them in the trash. “HOW DID I THINK THAT?” and “HOW DID I NOT KNOW?” But why should I have known - what, in my life, would ever have put better ideas across my desk? That I can meaningfully speak now about privilege and intersectionality and historiography is because between then and now I was put in a place to learn these things. I was exposed to ideas that I had never before been exposed to, and was given the grace to learn. I am tired of the expectation that every aspect of our past selves should be held to the same standard as the present. (Yes, to all the disingenuous bad-faith trolls out there, I obviously and of course am advocating for complete and total uncritical pardon for everything in the past ever. Were you a neo-Nazi ten years ago? Water under the bridge without question because that’s obviously, obviously, obviously the sort of extreme outlier case I am talking about good on you for being clever enough to notice.) But for the non-dipshits out there who understand how to read without injecting insincere hyperbole into every argument, I want us to be kinder to our past selves when we have learned to be better. It’s okay that you used to like Sherlock - there were genuinely fun things about it, and it’s okay that you didn’t possess an expert grasp of post-graduate feminist critical theory when you were 21. Or 31. Or 41. More concepts of academia have filtered into mainstream consciousness than ever before - and in saying that we should remember the corollary that ten, twenty, thirty years ago that was not the case. We knew less, had access to less, and were exposed to narrower viewpoints than we are today. It is unfortunate - but it was not our fault, and we cannot easily blame ourselves for it any longer. Nothing makes my blood boil more than seeing people taking umbrage that... oh, Farmer Joe McSmithHead of Buttnut, Alabama in 1963 was ignorant of internal Chinese politics and said some untrue things about Chinese Communism. But the only thing Farmer Joe had to tell him of the outside world was a radio that played country music, a TV with four channels and strict content guidelines to only show pleasant, moral, and god-fearing content, and the three books in the Buttnut library, two of which were the Bible. There have, and will always be, certain moral lines so obvious that people of any era should always be held accountable to them. But above that, in the more trivial space of media consumption, absorption, and critique, we have to learn to be more forgiving - to ourselves and to others, so long as in the present we have changed. Did you use the r-slur a lot because it was practically a form of punctuation on 4chan and that’s where you learned the ways of the internet? Did you learn the harmfulness of this practice and cease to do it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Did you and your friends used to make jokes about how Mexicans smelled because you saw Seinfeld do that in his standup and the whole TV laughed as though it was funny? Did you realize one day ‘wait a minute that’s actually super gross’ and stop repeating it? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. Have you gone back to a beloved childhood property and found it’s full of woman-beating and weird views on homosexuality? Did you find yourself able to critique this beloved thing and did not defensively double-down on shielding it from all harsh words? Then I do not condemn thee - go, and sin no more. I will not allow us to dismiss the cruelty and hurt of Mad Max Internet Culture with a flippant ‘well that’s just how it was back then” but nor will I allow anyone to condemn us all as being consciously unfeeling, willfully ignorant, purposefully hateful. Some of us were. But some of us did not know, could not have known, needed to learn - and we were lucky enough to live in a time before cringe culture and cancel culture where we were allowed to have that opportunity to learn and grow. We need that today, for all young people who think themselves as woke as can be and ten years from now will look back and blush with shame for things they said and did in total ignorance. The sin is choosing to never change, not failing to change sooner.

#cringe culture #cancel culture #4chan #mad max #internet culture #the simpsons #bart simpson #r-slur #x-files #game of thrones #steven universe #Northern Exposure #chuck norris #jerry seinfeld #Alabama #communism #long post

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lj-writes · 6 years

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Why Black Panther will do well in China

This post contains SPOILERS for the Black Panther movie.

Black Panther has taken Korea by storm, hitting the one million viewers mark on its second day. Now with BP set for an early March release in China, astutely avoiding the Chinese New Year but a few weeks ahead of serious competition starting with Pacific Rim Uprising, the speculation is on whether it will succeed in the second largest movie market in the world.

Rob Caine at Forbes.com has pointed out that Black-led movies in the past were either not distributed at all or did not do well in China. However, I believe BP can break that streak and be a hit in China. In addition to being a good movie with universal appeal, its story and aesthetics, whether intentionally or not, are a good fit for that market.

Let's talk about simple stuff first, the visuals. One reason given for why Star Wars: The Last Jedi did so poorly in China was its drab visuals, which did not live up to what audiences there expect in a science fiction blockbuster. In contrast Black Panther, thanks to the work of costume designer Ruth Carter and set designer Hannah Beachler, is awash in vivid color and a sense of style that are garnering widespread acclaim. For this reason Black Panther is likely to be eye-catching for Chinese audiences.

China is also a market with high expectations for action scenes, and Black Panther with its extravaganza of action, with a particular emphasis on handheld weaponry and hand to hand combat, aims to satisfy. Wakanda’s general Okoye scoffing at guns as "primitive" and taking out a vehicle with a well-placed--and high tech, of course--spear is a meta moment, the announcement of a movie that largely eschews gunfights in favor of old school fighting prowess.

Then there is Wakanda itself, which is not a Western representative democracy but is technologically advanced, prosperous, and has deep roots in tradition and shared values in harmony with its material advances. This is much the same way China sees itself, as a country that does not have a Western-approved form of government but is still successful both politically and economically, leading the world in technology while avoiding the West’s bloodstained history of imperialism. (Whether reality matches this self conception is another matter and outside the scope of this post.)

Even T'Challa's ultimate decision to bring Wakanda out of its self-imposed seclusion can be read as a parallel to China's past isolation from, and subsequent reengagement with, the world. One of the ways China has expanded its global reach is through foreign aid, something Wakanda is shown to be doing at the end of the movie. Furthermore, Africa is the recipient of almost half of China's foreign aid. Given China’s increasing economic and political ties to the region, the African continent is ripe to enter the Chinese popular imagination and Black Panther is an inviting entry point.

Taking a step back from current events into history, the conflict between royal contender Erik Killmonger/N’Jadaka’s violent revolutionary aspirations and spy with a heart of gold Nakia’s call for reforms and greater engagement can be read as a reflection of China’s own reckoning with the Cultural Revolution. China has experienced a rage-fueled, horrendously destructive upheaval in its own past and is still grappling with the consequences As such it may well find itself fascinated by the charismatic antagonist ably played by Michael B. Jordan while being relieved by the ultimate victory of stability and moderation in the form of T’Challa and his marriage, both political and romantic, with the humanitarian Nakia.

Even farther back in history, and in the realm of aesthetics, the dynastic struggle of Black Panther--brother pitted against brother, the poisoned legacy of fratricide, a king’s tragic death, his mother and sibling forced to flee for their lives--hits the beats of royal political dramas that are still reproduced and reimagined in popular media. It should be a comfortably familiar tale for Chinese audiences, down to the rules of succession more ironbound than personal loyalties. Even better, these rules of succession happily involve more of the aforementioned hand-to-hand combat.

Fatherhood and legacy form another strong motif in Black Panther, and this too is likely to hit home with audiences in China. If one were to try and come up with a story that would pull at the heartstrings of the country that invented Confucianism, one could do much worse than two sons coming to grips with grief, loss, and legacy from their fathers and actually meeting their ancestral spirits on the way, all against the background of duty to people and country. (It’s surprising that the movie was cleared for distribution, actually, because the censors tend to frown on the supernatural and ghosts. I suppose they were able to pass the scenes of T’Challa and Killmonger meeting their fathers as psychedelic hallucinations.)

The women of Black Panther are likely to fit comfortably into preexisting niches, too. For all the talk about how revolutionary it is for the movie to have so many action heroines, Chinese media has quite a long history of such characters from wuxia novels and movies. They are rarely the centers of their own stories, true, but rather play supporting roles as love interests, family members, allies, and enemies of male protagonists. Black Panther’s female cast are likely to be received as part of that tradition.

For all these reasons, if I were to take a guess, I would say Black Panther has been engineered at least as much for success in China as domestically. If the film does well in that market, it would be well-deserved: in addition to its universal themes, Black Panther has much to offer to Chinese audiences in particular and I think they will come away from it deeply satisfied.

#black panther #spoilers #bp spoilers #china #marvel cinematic universe #meta

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globalmediaindustries · 4 years

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Sabaton: The Battle of Identity

Music has always been subject to technological change. When around 1860 the first recording of a music piece was made, it forced music to become a dual-efficient commodity: now both live and recorded music could be sold. With the invention of respectively the vinyl, the cassette and the CD, recorded music became a mass product. These two faces of music, live and recorded, were the two most defining and the most accessible ways of getting to know the musician that you love. Identification with the musician was done via the music itself and the relation was otherwise formed by interviews done by the mass media. The musician could still sustain their artistic lives with this double income.

However, the rising popularity of the internet in the last decade of the twentieth century changed everything. The possibility of endless digitally copying music pushed the musical container into an artificial state and became superfluous. This change introduced the decline of the recording as a source of income. Firstly, the illegal pirating of music killed one of the two revenue streams. The rise of streaming services thereafter compensated this fall-back, but did that too little. Nowadays, recorded music isn’t a huge source of income anymore and musicians are predominantly relying on the commission earned by performing. This last development forced the musician to expand their horizons beyond music. Recorded music is nothing more than a sales pitch for the musicians live shows nowadays. This is where they get their true revenue. To quote musicologist Keith Negus once this matter: Music is a means to another end rather than an end in itself.

In the modern digital age, the musician is relying more and more upon forming an (group)identity. The record companies are now commoditizing an identity via music. Nevertheless, this evolution isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the industry. With the help of the internet, getting close to an artist has never been so effortless. The proliferating use of social media actualizes a closer bond between the musician and their audience. This blog post will focus on a sense of identity contrived by working with YouTube as a storyboard, explaining notes of the artist on their songs and crafts, obtaining both a better connection with existing fans and building bridges to a broader audience with the help of the algorithms of the video service. The case study in this blogpost is built around Swedish metal band Sabaton, highly successful on musical platforms like Spotify, as well as on Youtube as historical storytellers. With this transcendence of the traditional borders of the media, they could be a blueprint for the future of interaction with the musician’s audience.

youtube

Through their music, Sabaton aims to tell the stories of historic battles, events, wars and soldiers. Because they do this through the perspective of the people they are singing about, soldiers during WW1 for example, there is very little historical reflections on the subject matter. Because of this, and the subject matter itself, they had to defend themselves from accusations of nazism and rightwing sympathies. Although we will not focus on that, we wanted to mention it, because Sabaton does deal with very sensitive subjects in a way that does not appeal to everyone. For this blog post, however, let us move past this controversy and look at their content and music without moral or ethical judgement, but purely as a case study for the use of YouTube; because Sabaton uses YouTube in a very interesting way.

First of all, they have two channels: one is their regular music channel, the other is The Sabaton History Channel. On that channel they dive deeper into the subject matter of their music, explaining the history behind it as well as some anecdotes about the creation of the song. This ‘show’ is hosted by Indy Neidell, a veteran of historical YouTube channels. The entire channel is a collaboration between TimeGhost, Neidell’s main channel, and Sabaton.

Through this collaboration, the music of Sabaton gets introduced to a whole new audience. An audience that might not be familiar with metal music, but who are interested enough in history to watch Neidell’s other channels, mainly the TimeGhost and World War Two channels. I say that because of how YouTube’s algorithm works: these channels are all linked as ‘Featured Channels’, a list of channels that the original channel wants to highlight. In a few videos of the World War Two channel, Neidell mentions his work for Sabaton History and implores viewers to go and watch that too. For these new viewers the band Sabaton is rooted in historical content, perhaps more than metal music.

Broadening the audience is not the only thing that the band gets out of their interaction with Youtube, although it is the most interesting. They also have another way to connect to their existing fans, to earn more money through YouTube and Patreon, a crowdfunding platform built to provide artists a stable income. This comes back to something that Negus wrote: “Yet, as the few, ever more oligopolistic, major corporations began to reposition themselves as music companies (seeking profits from multiple rights rather than dwindling income from record sales)”. The use of YouTube can be viewed as one way to supplement the dwindling income from record sales.

youtube

Through the multiple YouTube channels Sabaton has, in theory, they have a global reach. This is hard to investigate since public statistics do not show the background of the viewers, but the comments on the videos can say a lot. One example, the official video for Bismarck, mostly has comments in English, but there are quite some comments using the Cyrillic alphabet. Even though the song is named after a German World War II battleship, it is not weird that most comments are in English, as that is the lingua franca on YouTube. But all of these Cyrillic comments date from two weeks ago or even later, while the video was posted in April 2019, and most of the comments seem to date from then. This could be because a year the Russian band Radio Tapok covered the Sabaton song Attack of the Dead Men, a song about a battle between Russian and German soldiers in Poland, and they also performed it together in May. Apparently, this attracted Russian-speaking fans to the Swedish band, fans they would not otherwise have attracted. The Russian video for this song has next to no English comments, and the English version has a relatively small amount of Russian comments, showing that the glocalised music might be spreading globally, but the audiences have not fully merged yet.

youtube

It seems that songs about battles or people from a certain country attract viewers from that same country. In the comments for many of these videos, you can find people praising their national heroes or lamenting that they do not receive enough attention worldwide or even in their home countries. This is visible in the Sabaton History video on war hero Leslie “Bull” Allen. I did not have to watch the video to find out Bull Allen’s nationality, as I could figure it out from the many comments starting with “As an Australian”. Looking at their tour dates, you can also see that they mainly tour the US and Europe, especially western and northern Europe, and these venues are rather large. Recently, Russia and other countries where Russian is also spoken have also been included in the tour locations. As their last album is solely about the First World War, it is unsurprising that countries that the Great War was fought in and remember it every year are also the countries that the tour was planned in. The only real outlier is the US, since they did not include other nations that sent soldiers to die on the fronts of the First World War.

Sabaton has worked very hard to become known for their niche of historical metal music. This identity resonates with a large audience, and their online presence and the topics they discuss seem to be attracting new audiences with every new location they sing about in their songs, and especially when they talk about in their history videos. It is noteworthy that many of the commenters on their YouTube videos seem to be from the country they are discussing in the video, suggesting that their audience is not as global as they might have hoped. This online audience does seem to translate into real life concert attendees, as they are currently focussing on the areas which are featured on their albums. This can be seen as a smart marketing strategy and an easy way to find a niche in a large genre, or as underutilisation of metal music’s demographic. Though Sabaton might not be the only one to blame, as algorithms on platforms such as YouTube try to only suggest videos that they think the user will surely love, so it is not too remarkable that their videos seem to garner most fans in areas that they directly reference in their music. So if they wish to expand their audience, they will have to expand their song topics. With this they could be a prime example of how musicians should interact with their audience in the digital era.

Sources

Cayari, Christopher, ‘’Connecting music education and virtual performance practices from YouTube’’, Music Education Research (2017) 1-17.

Gronow, Pekka, "The Record Industry: The Growth of a Mass Medium", Popular Music, Vol. 3 (Cambridge 1983) 53–75.

Hargreaves. Miell & Macdonald, ‘’What are musical identities, and why are they important.’’, in: Macdonald, Musical Identities (Oxford 2002) 1-18.

Negus, Keith, ‘’From creator to data: the post-record music industry and the digital conglomerates Media’’, Culture & Society 2019, Vol. 41(3) (London 2019) 367– 384.

Rogers, Jim, The death & life of the music industry in the digital age (New York 2013).

Sabaton, https://www.sabaton.net/news/tour-shows/the-great-tour-is-coming-to-europe-early-2020/

Sabaton look back on Nazi Controversy: Sabaton News. Anti-Music https://www.antimusic.com/news/16/August/ts18Sabaton_Look_Back_On_Nazi_Controversy.shtml

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mitchellbelstead6675 · 4 years

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B2B Telecommunication Market All-Inclusive Analysis 2020-2027 And Top Key Players Analysis (Covid-19 Impact)

Global B2B Telecommunications Market: Overview

The global B2B telecommunications market is rapidly growing and is expected to further increase its growth pace in the coming years. In fact, the B2B telecommunications market is predicted to outpace the consumer telecom market. Access to high-speed internet and availability of smartphones has paved way for telecom companies to explore the global B2B communications market.

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North America is expected to hold the largest share of the global B2B telecommunications market followed by Europe. It is also predicted that the Asia Pacific region will be growing at the fastest pace. Faster adoption of cloud and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) are the key reasons for the rapid growth. Latest developments in the media and entertainment, and telecom industries are pushing the growth in India, China and South Korea. This in turn is supporting the speedy growth of Asia Pacific B2B telecommunications market.

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You May Also Like PRNewswire on https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sake-brewery-industry-to-play-a-positive-role-in-cubitainers-market-growth-from-2020-to-2028-transparency-market-research-301104740.html

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8. How will the emerging political and economic scenario affect opportunities in key growth areas?

9. What are some of the value-grab opportunities in various segments?

10. What will be the barrier to entry for new players in the market?

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mangeshranedigitalmarketing · 4 years

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5 Instagram Effective Strategies to scale up your Business by Mangesh Rane

Why are we talking about Instagram? Why not other Social Media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn ?

✓ 300 Million Stories are used on Instagram every day

✓ Every month about 800 million people use Instagram

✓ 80% of people follow Business on Instagram

Instagram is the only platform which has a good engagement rate as compared to other platforms. It has provided great exposure to influencers and Business as compared to other platforms.

Before we dive into 5 Effective Strategies to leverage instagram let me introduce myself.

I am Mangesh Rane, Digital Marketing Strategist scaling up Business digitally through my experience and skills in online marketing.

5 Effective Strategies to Leverage Instagram for Business Growth

1. Instagram Account

Instagram Structure

When creating an Instagram account for the Business make sure you have a Business profile and not a personal account profile.

Instagram Business account provides good insights on stats of your post engagement, profile visits which are not featured in the personal account. Instagram claims to reduce the reach of Business accounts when you update the post as it prefers personal accounts reach.

By having a Business account you can promote your posts from Facebook Business Manager which have detailed targeting options. This is the main advantage of having Business Account.

How to create and link a Business account to Facebook Page? On my website Mangesh Rane you will find 101 Guide for Instagram Marketing which will give you a clear indepth procedure. I have explained Instagram in depth with all relevant examples.

After a Business profile the next step is to update Bio which talks about your Business which must have a call to action. For example if your Business is about Tour Packages you can update a Bio such as

"We offer phenomenal #Tour packages! Trip to any domestic and international destinations. Follow us to know more 🙂 "

Call to action with a crisp bio appeal others to follow your Instagram account who have interest in traveling.

Use Instagram Creator Studio

Through Creator Studio you get access to details of your post engagement on Business Profile which are not provided in a personal account. You must try the Creator Studio tool provided by Facebook for both FB and Instagram to gauge your posts performances.

The advantage of the Creator Studio is

✓ Age group, Gender details

✓ Day and Hour insights

✓ Cities and Country insights

These details can feed great insights while running a paid promotion on Instagram. By doing so you may have better sales or leads for your business.

Define your Niche

What's your product/service about you need to create content relevant to it. Share tricks, tips that could ease the pain points of your prospects. Instagram is about engagement,you can keep it entertaining, inspiring value adding post content. Use 20 - 80% rule i.e. after every 10 value addition posts you update have 2 promotional posts on your Business Profile.

Avoid posts which have broad general topics. Keep a consistency in your posts with Brand elements such a logo, color code for Brand recall. In short by doing this you create an impression that lasts longer to recognise your Brand. Differentiate your Brand from others by a tagline that reflects your Brand key.

For example you have an Architect firm. On Instagram you can share designs of projects. Background story of a successful work undertaken. You can update a people's choice post on which design looks good where people can comment with reason.

You can share posts of the world's best Architecture monumentals with facts people don't know. Inshort create Instagram content which is interactive & engaging.

Have a consistency of such posts which will result in creating a Brand image. People will recognise what's the account about and which Business you are in.

Few Business categories that receives good response on Instagram from people are

✓ Health/Fitness

✓ Pets

✓ Modelling

✓ Fashion

✓ Photography

✓ Travel

✓ Cooking

Four Instagram Account Checklist

✓ Original High Resolution Logo of your Business

✓ Crisp Bio describing Business details with Call to Action ( For example Follow Us, Contact Us)

✓ Use Emojis, hashtags wherever relevant in Bio and posts

✓ Consistent posts of your Business details

Instagram provides only one option to update the website link in Bio. Update your Business website link in the Bio. This will drive people to your website looking for more details regarding your products/ services.

Create your Brand hashtags. Use these hashtags in your Marketing collaterals, bio which will create awareness. As you update content on Social Media associated with hashtags people find it easy to discover your post details through your Branded hashtags.

Brand hashtags enhance your brand search on Social Media directly through your Business name.

All above mentioned points are also applicable for influencers, Trainers, Personal Brands, Freelancers.

2 Content Marketing Strategy

The power of content marketing has made influencers from zero to Hero. It's an art to hold a person's attention through words written in a form of post captions, Ad creatives, emails , website content, blogs.

The power of quality content can lead to sales.

Anyform of content to receive engagement or traction require 3 important factors

✓ Strike Conversion through addressing pain

✓ Provide solution to the pain points

✓ Put Call to Action for people to engage

Here is an example of Ad copy I created for Coaching Institute -

Are you looking for the best Online Classes from 8th to 10th?

Due to the current lockdown situation Vikas Academy presents all students free online coaching sessions.

✓ Free Olympiad Classes

✓ Free NTSE Classes

✓ Free Meditation Mind relaxing sessions

✓ Online Live Practical sessions

✓ Free Student Counseling

✓ Activity Based Teaching

✓ Post lockdown transport facility

At Vikas Academy we have a panel of expert faculty from engineering background with 5+ years of experience in teaching. Team of 5+ trainers shaping 400+ student's life from 2015.

We have limited seats of 10 students batches. Contact Us Today!

If you look carefully it has all the 3 elements which provides exact details in a better way. The AD Creative received a good response when I promoted it on Facebook.

( If you want such digital marketing tips for your Business you may access it on Mangesh Rane website)

On Instagram you can update content in 3 general formats as of 2020 on your profile as posts

✓ Images

✓ Videos

✓ Carousel

Trending types of the format are 60 sec vidoes and Carousel posts. I use a lot of Carousel posts as Instagram allows about 10 images of sequences which can be displayed swiping left one after the other.

Tools for Content Creations

I use the following tools for content creation and edits on mobile.

Canva - For making Social Media posts

Quora - For content curation and research

Kinemaster - For editing 2 min Videos

PicArts - For editing images and adding creative effects

There are a lot of tools as per your requirement on google. Above listed tools can be easily used on Android mobile.

3. Scale Up Instagram Account

✓ Follow accounts that have good followers base which aligns with your business

For example you are a pet lover having Business to supply products related to pet shelter, pet foods. Follow an Instagram account of a person with high volume of follower base and also interested in pet products. In short there should be a commonality between you both.

✓ Connect Engage Retain Formula

You can engage on the other's Instagram post through comment with adding a tip that others might use to ease their work. Creating a long lasting relationship by connecting first, second engaging through adding value in any form as per your knowledge than flourish that relationship to build a like mighted community. This will retain and increase your followers in the long run. Aim creating a community of same Interest and keep watering the roots of this likewise formed people through joy, emotions ,help and solutions through your posts, comments, likes, chat messages. It's a win-win situation for all.

✓ Contest | Competition | Giveaways | Quiz | Games

Once you have a base of followers with good response on your posts, stories on instagram you can arrange a Contest like tag us and post a selfie with your pet and win a gift voucher worth 2k INR. I have given an example assuming you have a pet product or pet care niche.

What will happen when people tag your Instagram account to win a contest? Your account will reach larger people and others might know about it while they participate in it. Thus there is a possibility you may gain followers and engagement in this process.

You can keep a Competition that will allow people to participate in a way they send their cooked dish to you while you post all the participants cooked dish images on Instagram from your Business account, reward the highest comment and like received post as a winner. Assuming your niche is food blogging or cooking.

✓ Hashtag campaigns for awareness

Most of the brands create an awareness around a conference, event or video using Hashtags in their posts, content. They connect with influencers to get reach.

These influencers on Instagram have a base of trusted fan base. Brands associate with them to create awareness of their marketing campaigns.

4. Hashtags Importance

Hashtags groups content in one bucket. For example #mondaymotivation groups all the content updated on motivation of all Instagram posts who include mentioned hashtag.

Why use Hashtag? .

Use Hashtag so people can discover your content going beyond a set of followers your account has on Instagram. In short if you don't use Hashtag you limit the content visibility to people following your Instagram account.

Use Hashtag to discover content updated by others. You may get an idea of the viral content.

You can use upto 30 hashtags as per Instagram set limit. It's a good strategy to use your brand name hashtag, content specific hashtag. Use relevant hashtags to the content for best practices and avoid likeforlike type of hashtags which may be for bot recognition. Using bot related hashtags may put your account in risk as per Instagram policy.

Here's a trick to use Hashtag, take 10 Hashtags which are used million times, take 10 Hashtags which are in range of 500k to 1 million. Remaining 10 Hashtags can have low search volume including your Branded hashtags.

#instagram #business #instagramstrategy #social media #social networking #contant #marketingstrategy

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